“Being under fire from a dragon skeleton changed everything really fast.”
“Shit, I had one. I must have dropped it when I fell.” Or maybe it’s when that first bone almost took me out. I can’t remember. All I know is I had a bone and now I very much do not.
Jaxon looks completely embarrassed as he says, “I’m sorry, guys. We dragged you along on this expedition from hell for nothing.”
“First of all, you didn’t drag us along,” Flint says. “We came willingly. So stop beating yourself up. And secondly…” He reaches into his pocket with a wicked grin and pulls out a delicate-looking bone about the length of a pencil. “Toe bones still count as bones, right?”
“Hell yeah, they do!” Eden tells him with a whoop of delight. “You did it!”
“Umm, I think you mean we did it.” Flint shoves the bone back into his pocket for safekeeping, then reaches down and helps Jaxon to his feet. “And not to sound too much like a giant baby, but can I suggest we get the hell out of here before the next we’re-all-gonna-scream-and-die activity begins?”
Macy giggles and says, “I’m with you on that one. Luckily, I’ve already got”—she pulls out her spell book—“a portal back to school ready and waiting. Before we left, I made sure to do the spell that opens up our dorm room as the other side of the portal, remember? Because honestly, I don’t think I could do that dragon ride again, guys.”
“I could literally kiss you, Macy,” Xavier says, and I can tell my cousin has no idea how to reply…even though she is suddenly all smiles.
87
All the Right Moves
I wake up to Macy dancing around the room with her headphones in. She’s still in her pajamas, and I can see a ton of cuts and bruises on her arms and upper back—thank you, Dragon Boneyard—but she looks happy. Really happy, and I don’t blame her.
Last night was terrifying, and I’m feeling pretty glad to be alive, too, even though we’re both running on fumes after—I glance at the clock—only about four hours of sleep. Maybe that’s why, instead of rolling over and going back to sleep, I convince her to switch to her phone speaker and then dance around the room with her.
We’re laughing at each other as we shimmy and shake our hips, but it doesn’t even matter because we’re alive…and because we got the dragon bone.
We. Got. The. Dragon. Bone.
That means we’ve got all four things necessary to get Hudson out of my head. I mean, yeah, we still have the Unkillable Beast to get through, but we’re almost there. Why shouldn’t we celebrate?
“Oh, I don’t know,” Hudson interjects from behind me, sitting up and leaning against the wall on my bed. “Because the Unkillable Beast is going to kill you, perhaps?”
“Hush!” I tell him as I collapse next to him, out of breath as the song ends. Macy plops down on her own bed as well. “Don’t be raining on my parade this morning.”
“Is that what I’m doing?” He looks somber, but there’s an underlying note of something in his voice that has me narrowing my eyes.
“You’re happy,” I accuse.
“Excuse me?” Immediately, the tone is gone, replaced by his normal sardonic one.
“You are,” I tell him as surprise courses through me. “You’re actually happy for once.”
He sniffs but doesn’t say anything else, which means I’m right. The knowledge only makes me grin more widely. A happy Hudson can only be a good thing.
“Xavier held my hand last night,” Macy says, and now she’s smiling up at the ceiling she’s been contemplating so hard for the last couple of minutes.
“What?” I shoot up in bed. “When?”
“When we were walking back from the Boneyard.”
“How did I miss that?” I demand. “I was right there, wasn’t I?”
“You were one of the first to go through the portal, with Flint and Jaxon. Xavier and I were walking together at the back and…” She pauses, a dreamy smile coming over her face. “About halfway back to school, he told me to watch out for something in the tunnels and tugged my hand to pull me away. And then he just never let go.”
“Seriously? That’s great. I mean, if you like him?”
“I do, actually.” She rolls over on her bed and hugs her pillow to her chest. “He gives me butterflies. Not like the ‘oh my gosh, the most popular boy in school is in my room’ butterflies, but real butterflies. Because of who he is,